How Your Dining Plan Works

We have designed our dining plans so that you can choose when, where and what you want to eat in a way that best fits your schedule and dining needs. Your dining plan is encoded on your Carnegie Mellon ID card, so you will have easy access to your account wherever you go.

There are several different ways to use your dining plan on campus. Our traditional and community dining plans consist of meal passes combined with a declining balance account. Graduate students can also purchase a DineXtra only plan which acts as a declining balance account for the entire semester.

Meal Passes

There are four meal blocks per day - breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night. You can use one pass during each of these blocks. Passes normally consist of an entrée, side dishes and a drink.

Flexible Dollars and DineXtra

Flexible dollars and DineXtra are loaded value that can be used at any point during the semester. They can be used to upgrade your meal passes with special options like premium entrées or to purchase items a la carte at any of our dining locations. Flexible dollars and DineXtra can also be used at Entropy, the campus convenience store, to purchase grocery items and other sundries. In addition to dining locations on campus, they are also accepted at Eat n' Park (Murray Ave), Vocelli's Pizza (Baum Blvd) and Subway (S. Craig St) off campus.

Unused flexible dollars do not roll over to the next semester. DineXtra balances do roll over from the fall to the spring semester, but your account expires at the end of the spring semester.